design thinking

A framework that I use to think about problems disruptive technology could help solve is based on what Donald Rumsfeld wrote in his memoir, Known and Unknown: Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We […]

I have worked with many product managers on a product vision exercise. In my observation the place where the product managers get hung up the most is when they confuse product vision for product definition. To use an analogy, product vision is a trailer and product definition is a movie. When you’re watching a movie […]

For an ISV (Independent Software Vendor) it is everyone’s job to ensure customer success but it is no one person’s job. This is changing. I see more and more companies realizing this challenge and want to do something about it. Sales is interested in maintaining relationship with customers for revenue purposes and support works with […]

Being a passionate design thinker I am a big believer in failing fast and failing often. I have taken this one step further; I celebrate one failure every week. Here’s why: You get more comfortable looking for failures, analyzing them, and learn from it I have sat through numerous post-mortem workshops and concluded that the […]

Jake Porway who was a data scientist at the New York Times R&D labs has a great perspective on why multi-disciplinary teams are important to avoid bias and bring in different perspective in data analysis. He discusses a story where data gathered by Über in Oakland suggested that prostitution arrests increased in Oakland on Wednesdays […]

I recently came across this interview (thanks Dharini for the link!) with Nick Chamandy, a statistician a.k.a a data scientist at Google. I would encourage you to read it; it does have some great points. I found the following snippets interesting: Recruiting data scientists: When posting job opportunities, we are cognizant that people from different […]

My ongoing conversations with several people continue to reaffirm my belief that Data Science is still perceived to be a sacred discipline and data scientists are perceived to be highly skilled statisticians who walk around wearing white lab coats. The best data scientists are not the ones who know the most about data but they […]

Many enterprise software vendors sympathize. “We know it’s a bad experience” or “We will fix the usability.” One of the reasons the software is not usable is because the makers never had any empathy for the end users who would use it. In many cases the makers didn’t even know who their end users were; […]

Say you’re designing something new for a product or service. Of course, you have your own ideas for what to do. But, how informed are you really about what is needed? This is a question I faced in thinking about game mechanics used in a social platform. A common product approach is to work up […]

During his recent visit to the office of 37 Signals, Jeff Bezos said, “to be consistently objective, one has to be objectively inconsistent.” I find this perspective very refreshing that is applicable to all things and all disciplines in life beyond just product design. As a product designer you need to have a series of […]

World Airline RoutesEvery company is looking for that cool data scientist who will come equipped with all the knowledge of data, domain expertise, and algorithms to turn around their business. The inconvenient truth is there are no such data scientists…

A few months back, I was helping a very large customer of ours to help simplify as well as automate their process of trading financial instruments. During one of my many visits to their office, I met a person who was trying to explain to me his job in supporting the people that are involved […]

Photo credit: String Theory by Michael KrigsmanThe endless succession of failed projects forces one to question why success is elusive, with an extraordinary number of projects tangling themselves in knots. These projects are like a child’s string ga…

Bruce Nussbaum, a design thinking thought leader and a professor of Innovation and Design at Parsons The New School of Design, recently wrote that Design Thinking Is A Failed Experiment. He claims that: Design Thinking has given the design profession and society at large all the benefits it has to offer and is beginning to […]